Funding and Events

Historical Documents

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The Evergreen State College is often noted for what it isn't, perhaps most famously by the "Four Nos" first articulated almost 50 years ago by founding president Charlie McCann. Before Evergreen opened its doors, direction for the new college was as much about what it shouldn't be as what it should. State Senator Gordon Sandison said the Legislature did not want "just another four year college" bound by rigid structures of tradition, and Governor Dan Evans expressed the need to "unshackle our educational thinking from traditional patterns" to create a "flexible and sophisticated educational instrument" (Clabaugh 1970).

Knowing what we aren't helps define us, but it doesn't tell the bigger story of what we are. The documents listed below are some of the college's primary texts and key secondary sources, arranged by decade. Some examine the college from a broad perspective. Others focus more tightly on particular elements of Evergreen's history, organization, and educational approach. We hope these materials shed light on how Evergreen became the college it did and how it continues to define and redefine itself.

If you don't see something that you think should be here, contact John McLain, ext. 6045. To learn more about Evergreen's history, visit the Archives in Library 0426.

Patrick Hill. The Rationale for Learning Communities. Speech delivered at the Inaugural Conference on Learning Communities of the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education. 22 October 1985.

1990s

Barbara Leigh Smith and Jean T. MacGregor. What Is Collaborative Learning? An abbreviation of an article of the same name that appeared in Anne Goodsell, Michelle Maher, Vincent Tinto, Barbara Leigh Smith and Jean MacGregor. Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1992.